Ok, so it’s no surprise or shock to anyone that I would write about Russia or her language or culture. I want to talk about why I love the language so dang much. When I was growing up I thought for sure that I would become and architect and design the homes and office buildings of the future. I was always the kid on the block that would knock on your door for your refrigerator boxes so that I could measure up and build something awesome out of them. This was my dream all the way up until my first semester at BYU. I took a construction blueprint reading class. Not only was I the only freshman in the class, I was the only one in the class to have graduated high school in this century!
While on my mission I always heard the wonderful phrase “it’s not all about the numbers” and I was destined to prove them wrong. I was pretty sure that if I had X amount of lessons each week it was a result of Y amount of new contacts plus Z amount of English invitations passed out, etc. Success as a missionary turned into a fun, complex mathematical equation (of course I didn’t live by one, but I thought the idea was interesting). I came back from my mission more than ready to take on BYU's Accounting program because of my new found love for complex and practical equations. I took all of the prerequisites, got accepted and was more than confident that that’s what I wanted to do. I wasn't expecting what happened next.
Russian filled every corner of my heart; areas that I didn’t even know existed! Through intense study, I came to find out that the entire language was nothing more than a huge mathematic, systematic equation that always needs to be solved in order to express yourself in the most perfect way. The beauty of any foreign language, in my case Russian, is a combination of my two passions. Creating something that wasn’t there before such as a building out of raw materials, or expressions and thoughts out of random words or sounds. As well as systematically placing the most correct verb, adverb, noun, adjective, pronoun, etc. in the right order to make the sentence, or equation, correct.
President Hinckley always said something along the lines of “pursue your interests, and the world will reward you greatly for it.” I take great comfort in this because that it was I did, pursue my interest, and I haven’t regretted it for a single millisecond.
I served my mission in Ukraine and spoke Russian, this was an enviornmental concern that I had the entire time I served there and in these cities."Since 1990 Russian experts have added to the list the following less spectacular but equally threatening environmental crises: the Dnepropetrovsk-Donets and Kuznets coal-mining and metallurgical centers, which have severely polluted air and water and vast areas of decimated landscape."
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